Ok, I finally find the solution.

Thanks for your feedback, indeed a solution has to be find inside modo, but things like that are moving really slowly for big software, so I did a request here first :)

Actually in modo I have a vertex map list of 82 maps, and merging all the objects into a new layer don't process anything inside this normal map list. I tried to merge
all the maps in one ... but it doesn't seems to work.

Probably a script is required (not sure if this data is exposed via scipt), I did some research on the forum, but as usuall I don't have a lot of time, I have something like 20 ships like that to build and shade in a week.

But anyway, here's how to process.

Export the in .obj (ngones), use the mergeobj editor, import in modo and just do a [polygon>align] to flip all the inverted polygon.

I didn't try that before because I remember having bad experience by flipping polygons in modo without having trouble with the vertex normal map. But at that time (is was the headphone model), I had complete flipped parts because the solid inside MoI wasn't closed, meaning that the polys and normal where flipped.

In this ship model, only some polys are flipped, so the align command work whitout having any trouble with the vertex normal.

Hi PaQ - that's great that you have a solution that is not labor intensive!

The other operation that may help in Modo is if you hit flip twice.

I kind of remember now hearing that doing that will also rotate the points of a face to put the first point of it at a convex vertex (can't seem to find the reference now in the Modo forum), so that may be another option if the align tool does give you any normal map problems.

Maybe they have tuned up the align tool since the time you had the problem with the headphones, so that it does not disturb the normal map.


By the way, cool ship! I hope you may be able to post some snaps of some of the other ones that you are building.


- Michael

Yes sure, I have used MoI quite a lot during the project, I'll post some models later :) (and a couple of bugs too hehe)

(The double flip trick works too in modo :))

Hi PaQ,

> (The double flip trick works too in modo :))

I believe that is a pretty solid indication that the problem with the OBJ import is not picking the starting vertex of the polygon in the spot that suits Modo best.

The way that Modo's (and LightWave's) orientation mechanism works, it only looks at the edges coming off of the very first point in the polygon, and uses the cross product of those edges to get the orientation of the polygon.

That is just not a good method to use, it is too fragile on more complex n-gons because if that first vertex happens to be a reflex vertex instead of a convex one, it will be pointing in the reverse direction, and additionally with this method the normal is not even defined at all if the 2 edges coming off of it are exactly colinear.

Instead of that it is a lot better to use Newell's plane fit algorithm which takes into account all the points in the polygon and is not so fragile to behave differently depending on which point happens to come first.

Really it would be better for them to fix this in Modo's core orientation mechanism (rather than in the OBJ importer specifically) to make that less sensitive to which point happens to be the starting one of the polygon, that would prevent this same problem from popping up in other situations as well.

- Michael

Well somehow modo = lightwave for many points finally ... it's an old concept in a new skin :)
Just get my copy of uvlayout yesterday, amazing piece of software for uv unwarping !

Works quiete well with ngones from MoI export (just had few crashes on some part, but it will be fixed soon I guess)

Nice origami work there PaQ ;)



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> Well somehow modo = lightwave for many points finally ...
> it's an old concept in a new skin :)

I'm glad that they've got vertex normal support now at least, even if it still has some rough edges to work out that has been a great step.


Wow, that looks like a very coherent and great quality mapping! Very cool.

Are the spaceships actually going to be newspaper spaceships or was that just a test?

- Michael

Hehe thanks, it's just a test to show the uv's quality (more funny than traditionnal checkerboard :))

(a bit off topic, Is it a way actually in MoI to show when a solid is not valid ? (open or broken one) ... actually I test it by doing some booleans in, but it's not very handy)

Original for read the news of the day :)

Great model, PAQ!

Heck, I sorta like using the newspaper for uv checking over a checker!

-Will

Thanks Will :)

Very nice looking ship Paq. Love the detail as always.

So here's an other one, modeling time 8 hours.
The model was not really defined, so I was free to do more less what I want, the goal was just 'adding details as far as I can in one day'
I've still received a draft model, so the global shape has to fit in ... some kind of box .:o)



and here's the result, thanks to MoI is was really funny and the result is quiete ok (for something that wasn't designed :))




other models coming soon

AWESOME detailing!

-Will

very cool!

A new design of electric razor :)

Very impressive.
Thanks for sharing.

Brian

Cool Paq, great level of detail on your result!

Looks like you are getting to a high level of productivity to crunch out stuff like this in one daily session...

- Michael

First thought, intergalactic cargo ship, love the details PaQ !

> other models coming soon

Same time, same channel, can't wait :)

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